I made a static test of the 15m; poor wind of 2-4 knots on the beach , to low and irregular to take the risk to go on water since I had only 1 hour in front of me; All went well and overall it follows my expectations, I am editing a video that will come to illustrate but I am short in time currently :
- arrived on site, the wind was too weak to identify clearly its direction (less 0-1-2 knots I would say), flags were absolutely dead.
- I was about to leave the site, but wanted to connect my bar on it anyway, so I unpacked ;
- the moderate ratio lead to a limited foot print on the ground which is good for my confined spots.
- the wind grow a bit, flags showed a regular direction most of the time (always below 45 degre angle to fix ideas)
- launching with no inflation (impossible, no wind on the ground) ; I had to walk energetically about 8-10 meters to put it at zenith
- inflation time is as fast as the 12m (good!).
- stability and rigidity is very good, I made a 2 meter line slack test, ok. wWind was too poor to test more with surrouding peoples and trees.
- I feel that it stays in the air with a bit less wind than the 12m light (to be confirmed , impossible to measure the wind at this level)
- still possible to loop in extreme window and low wind, just need to start the loop a bit higher above 45 degree . So there should be some lulls situations with the kite quite low where the 12m may be easier to recover (it is natural due to additional 3m2 )
- clearly more power during the loop: the +3m2 are actually present ! now with the Pulsion experience, I think I would have been able to get up on the foil with some of this loops, as I was pulled and was gliding on the ground downwind 2-3 meters; to be confirmed in deep water.

Next time i will try to put it on the shorter knot of the A bridle setting to increase camber, since I had comfortable margin on the stability and I think I would have then reached even better zenith ability.

Overall very good impression, I sensed to drive a cloud ... promising !

-It is the first time I feel the big difference between weight (of the cloth= 1.9 kg) and inertia ( weight of the air + cloth = approx 7 kg). That is to be the main explanation why it does not fall like a stone ( LEI) when a no-wind lull arrives. Anyway, a good new topic to open---

here is my corresponding video. A bit long but allows to catch all details and senations ; hopefully the beautiful music from Damien Rice will help...
look at at how slow it can glide in the hyper light wind, still being relatively quick turning.

More area, higher cell count and higher AR. Looks like it has 40 cells which is quite a lot, result is good cell shape and clean looking wing. Wingtip shape and canopy curve look balanced too.

This kind of kite have to compete against Speeds and even race foils. If it is near Speed level and lighter in weight it will be an interesting kite. But in snowkiting quite small differencies count if longer trips or races are participated: it is very annoying to come always late to pauses and have to do much more turns upwind. It means you do more work and have less rest. I know couple of guys who immediately put their new kites for sale after last VAKE...

And if highest performance is not needed, there is lot of options including many LEI's, which have their own benefits. It must be remembered that every 18m foil kite is slow flying kite, and for light weight kiter they are even slower - this is a fact many heavy kiter does not realize.

Whether snowkiting in 3-4kn is possible or worth it depends many things. Kiter weight may or may not have significance here, any way it matters much less than on the water.

Again it would be interesting to see how the bridle is designed, if it is similarly constructed to smaller sizes. If every rib is bridled kite has huge amount of bridle line, a bit hard to believe this could be the case.

The dark session is a mesh at each end of the inter-cell cloth (instead of a hole for Flysurfer for example). It allows to have absolutely no holes all along the inter-cell (holes can become structural weak points). Same on my 12m and 15m.
I do not know the bridle philosophy but since it led to good results on 12 m and 15m , I would bet Benoit Tremblay kept the same principle.
Every size is developped individually, hence I suppose the aspect ratio is a bit higher (5.0 for.the 12m and 5.25 for the 15m if I remember well), around 5.5 maybe to be confirmed.

The 12m and 15m are very powerfull, soI think this size is either for TT riding in low wind or for heavy riders only for snow or hydrofoil (when a LEI would not stay in the air, even properly worked with skills). I would also add that I love light weight kites more and more (including my one-strut LEI), as I find that even in medium winds, it allows a better agility and a more efficient / smooth work of the kite when it flies toward zenith. Drift ability is also far improved by weight savings (among other parameters) IMO.

Regis-de-giens wrote:It allows to have absolutely no holes all along the inter-cell (holes can become structural weak points)

PL and FS have used mesh in their kites, FS to my knowledge only in S4 dlx. Results have not been very good, in worst cases there is tears in most of the ribs. So if structural weak point is somewhere it is in the mesh part of the rib.

If there is very much bridle line there is also a lot of bridle drag. But if kite is used in low winds and low apparent wind speeds it very probably isn't so harmful. However added drag decreases L/D, so speed, upwind ability, jumping and hang time may suffer. Mostly speed and upwind, I think. Because 18m kite has more cells it means (if bridled similarly) bridle drag is bigger than in smaller models. This is against performance gain achieved from higher AR.

Regis-de-giens wrote:I suppose the aspect ratio is a bit higher (5.0 for.the 12m and 5.25 for the 15m if I remember well), around 5.5 maybe to be confirmed.

Yes, you can see it has higher AR and more cells than smaller versions. AR 5.5 is not far from the truth.

I hope this kite will become in production, even though I don't belong the target group.

I tested the pulsion 15m 2 weeks ago (a friend of mine bought one) in very good conditions, light wind and nice small waves:

I really like that kite although I thought I will never fly a kite bigger than 12m (never say never). Powerful, agile, good drift even in light wind (see first picture, I was on a firewire stweet potato 5'2 strapless and I had no problem doing bottom turns down the line in these small waves). I would not mind having one for snowkiting! (if money would permit, maybe next year)

I have hydrofoiled with my Pulsion 15m ; here's the short video I made ; tried to say within 3 minutes but I did not resist to show you the real-time 40 seconds when the kite droped in the water after a failed jibe, and how it behaves in this the light wind. From experience it shall not stay too long in the water however to relaunch in poor wind;